Business Essentials Package

What is Business Essentials?

Our most popular package is FSB Business Essentials which includes a whole range of benefits and products designed to make your business fly

What's included?

A suite of legal benefits including a dedicated helpline, bundled insurance products and a range of online information to keep your business safe. Plus a whole range of negotiated benefits to help save you money and win business.

Chris Green's Story

'Within a few weeks of joining we'd taken advantage of FSB’s Online Legal Documents. We started a graduate programme and access to these documents gave us an understanding of the legal side, and has helped us to create a number of processes and procedures.'

Marc Wileman's Story

'When we first took on a member of staff, we used the online legal document template library. FSB does more important stuff than you think it does, there are lots of member benefits, probably more than we actually use.'

How much does FSB membership cost?

We offer three packages to suit your business needs. Joining FSB Connect is free, our Business Essentials package starts at £172.50 in the first year and our specialist Business Creation package has an introductory price of £99 in the first year.

How to create a business continuity plan

A business continuity plan helps your company survive and continue running after a major disruption or disaster, like a fire or flood. It highlights the step-by-step process of what should be done to prevent risks that can lead to your business having to close down.

But creating a business continuity plan is by no means a simple task. From determining your business processes to essential resources and contingency planning, there’s a lot to think about. This guide aims to help by explaining the key things to consider.

Determining risks, processes and impact

When creating a business continuity plan a good place to start is by assessing the key functions of your business, the risks that could affect them, and the impact this could have on your company.

Key business processes

These are the areas of your company that it needs to function. This can differ, depending on your company.

For instance, it’s likely to be your production services if you manufacture products, your IT infrastructure if you’re a website designer, or your stock if you’re a retailer. Others business process could include:

Accounting

HR

Marketing

Sales

Understanding company threats

This is concerned with assessing the main risks that could disrupt your company. Consider ranking these in order of which threats could pose the highest risk to the lowest risk of disrupting your business.

For instance, an attack on the internet would be of higher risk to an online marketing company than a high-street shop. Threats could include:

Biological hazard

Epidemic illness

Natural disasters, fires or floods

Gas leak or power cut

Malicious internet attack

Determining impact

This involves looking at the impact these threats could have on your key business processes. It’s also known as a business impact analysis (BIA).

A BIA predicts the potential consequences of your business processes being disrupted. It should also determine your potential business loss from these processes being down for a day, a week, a month or longer. Impacts could include:

Loss of sales and income

Increased expenses

Decrease in customer satisfaction and loyalty

Delayed service delivery and poor product quality

Regulatory fines

Determining your key resources

Once you’ve determined areas of business functions, threats and impact, you should list the key resources your company relies on. This includes key staff, external contacts, equipment, and documents.

Consider ranking the resources in order of importance to your business, according to the maximum manageable downtime – this is how long your company can survive without that resource in place.

Key staff

These are the employees that your business can’t function without. Consider staff who:

Lead your sales services

Manage your company accountancy

Know the regulations associated with your services

Lead your production processes

Manage your clients and their accounts

It’s worth noting that some of these people can form part your business continuity team, explained later.

Key external contacts

It’s also important to list the key people (and their companies) outside your business, who are key to its operation. This can include:

Contractors and service providers

Suppliers and distributors

Bankers, accountants and attorneys

IT consultants, electricians or engineers

Utility companies

You should list vital contact information about your key staff and external contacts. This includes personal and business phone numbers and email addresses.

Key data, equipment and supplies

This is data, equipment and supplies you need to run your operation. It could include:

Data and databases to conduct client work projects

Equipment such as manufacturing machinery

Technology, including specific computers or software

Passwords and identification data to access key files and sites

Supplies, like materials to make products

When listing data and databases, it’s wise to also note details of back-up files and their locations.

Key business documents

This is all documentation you would need to continue running your business, or restart your company, if those documents were destroyed in a disaster. This could include:

Banking information

HR documents

Legal papers, like articles of cooperation

Tax returns

Utility bills

It’s wise to make copies of these documents and store them off site. You should also make a list of any ongoing payment dates, such as for business loans or your email services.

Contingency planning and business recovery

Once you’ve listed your essential resources, it’s important to determine your contingency plan to help your business continue running and recover in the event of a disaster. Key to this is equipment you’ll need and a location to work from.

Contingency equipment

When thinking about equipment, it’s important to identify alternative equipment you could use, and the services you could use to access it, if your current company equipment was destroyed. This could include services for:

Renting delivery vehicles

Copying or printing

Renting computers or laptops

You should also think about who in your staff will be responsible for managing the relationships with these service providers and making any key decisions.

Contingency location

This is where you will operate your business when your offices are unavailable. There are different places to consider, depending on your business.

This could be a hotel, a conference centre, a vacant shop, or a storage rental facility. You could also consider the offices of your contractor or attorney. Even a room in your house could work, if the space is available. When considering locations, you should also think about buildings that are:

Equipped with business facilities

Spacious to store your products

Have good internet access

In your business continuity plan it’s a good idea to include a map to the new location, with all the contact information you need to access it.

You should also list those people who could work from a home office. This can be useful if, for instance, your contingency location cannot accommodate all your staff.

Putting your plan together

With all the information across your key functions, resources and contingencies, you should be able to create step-by-step instructions of how to execute your business continuity plan.

This should address what to do and when, and the people who should do it. These people will make up your business continuity team. You should also list the names of each person and their responsibilities in the plan.

You should file all your information together as one document. It’s also wise to make copies of your plan and give one to each member of your continuity team. Consider keeping a copy in a location off-site or in a safety deposit box too.

Helping you with business continuity planning

Making sure our members can continue operating their businesses, whatever the circumstances, is a key priority of FSB. To help with this, we offer key services in business continuity planning. This includes:

A business continuity report, designed to fit your company needs

An online, one-stop shop, including business continuity plan templates

A helpline providing expert advice for business protection

If you’d like to find out more about how FSB can help your company with continuity planning, please visit our FSB Business Continuity web page.